Revealed: The dark world of male, female sex work

Voices of experience argue for removing homosexuality and sex work from the shadows of criminality as a way of promoting the rights of these populations and de-stigmatising access to health care services. This, the voices say, is essential if Botswana is to achieve the much-desired goal of zero new HIV infections.

In a packed conference room in Gaborone this week, male and female sex workers stepped out of the shadows, guided by their lobbyists, and revealed their faces, their stories, their pain and their pleas. Keeping sex work illegal under the law, they say, is penalising their very existence, while their clients, some of them violent, are walking in broad daylight enjoying the services under cover of night.